


It's Not Your Fault

by MissConstance



Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: Conversation, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Forgiveness, Gen, Patterson and Tasha are cute together, Patterson is here for Tasha, Self-Hatred, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 19:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7858954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissConstance/pseuds/MissConstance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tasha blames herself for Mayfair’s death and Patterson is there to comfort her.<br/>Can be read as a friendship or a love relationship (I like both). </p><p>Tasha Zapata/Patterson<br/>Mention of the team</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not Your Fault

It was a late Friday night in New York City and the streets were buzzing with life. Agent Patterson, however, wasn’t out partying but was enjoying a warm night at home. It was almost a month since they’ve discovered Mayfair’s brutal murder and since, well, since then everything was out of control. Jane was in prison (for now), Weller had to take a leave of absence to deal with everything (his father’s death, Jane’s betrayal, Mayfair’s death). Zapata, Reade, doctor Borden and her, were the only one staying (they had been assigned to a new team) but it felt like the world was collapsing around them and they couldn’t do anything about it.  
They never talked about it and it had created an invisible wall between all of them that was ruining what was left of their…friendship? Partnership?  
Patterson didn’t even know anymore what they were and what they are now.  
That was why she was alone at home, ruminating, instead of going out on a Friday night. 

Well, she thought with a sigh, I need to get used to it!

At that exact moment, her phone started buzzing; She looked who could be calling her at that time of the night.  
The screen spelled: Tasha Zapata.

Patterson frowned. Why was she calling her at this hour?  
But, despite herself, she couldn’t help but feel a rush of joy and warmth when she saw who was calling. She didn’t know what it meant but she was glad that Tasha, of all people, was calling her.  
“Tasha,” she answered her phone, “why are you calling…?”  
But she was interrupted by the cheerful voice of the other agent: “Patterson! It’s so good to hear your voice!” Then, she heard her giggle.  
Patterson was taken aback; she wasn’t used to seeing (or hearing) Tasha like that.  
“Tasha, are you feeling alright?”  
“Wonderful!” She giggled again. “Never been better!”  
Her voice sounded heavy and hoarse. Then it hit Patterson.  
“Tasha, are you drunk?”  
“What? No! I mean, I must have had a couple of drinks…wait! No, more… maybe I had more…”  
She was definitively drunk.  
Patterson sighed. Tasha was still rambling about her drinks on the other side of the phone.  
“Where are you?”  
Tasha stopped her babbling to answer her question.  
“Oh, you know, you don’t have to come… I just wanted to talk….I dialed your number….”  
And she started rambling once more.  
When Patterson finally got Tasha’s location, she grabbed her coat and keys and hurried out of the home, afraid that she might do something stupid. 

\---

Patterson arrived at the bar where Tasha had chosen to get wasted. She only had to take a few steps in the room to find the Latina girl sprawled on a seat in a corner. When she saw her, she smiled brightly and called for her:  
“Patterson! I’m here!” As if she hadn’t seen her, she thought, walking to her.  
“You want a drink?” She asked her when she was next to her, “We can order something. My treat”  
“Nope. I think you had enough for today.”  
“C’mon!” Tasha tried to bring her down next to her. Usually, she would have succeeded in this action, the Latina being a lot stronger than her. But, right now, she was too drunk to do so and her arms fell back flabbily at her side.  
“Come on, let’s go home,” Patterson suggested.  
At that proposition, Tasha’s face fell and her smiled faded. She looked dejected.  
“I don’t have home” she stated drearily.  
“Of course, you do. I’ve been there!”  
“No, you don’t understand.”  
She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something else but she changed her mind and stayed silent.  
Patterson sat down next to her, noticing her quick mood change.  
“What is it that I don’t understand?” She asked softly, “What’s going on Tasha?”

The other agent didn’t look really good. Since Mayfair’s death, she had noticed that she had lost a few pounds and often looked very tired. She thought that it was the aftershock of everything that had happened.  
But, looking at Tasha now, she realized that it was much more that just that. She was getting drunk by herself on a Friday night and didn’t want to go home, like some demons were waiting for her there, ready to consume her.  
She had heavy bags under her eyes and she was very pale (something that was odd given her skin tone). She almost looked depressed. 

“Tasha,” she said one more time, trying to get her attention.  
The Latina, who was staring into space, looked back at her, a bleak look on her face.  
She sighed.  
“It doesn’t look like home anymore,” she started, “they turned it upside down. I tried to find others bugs but I haven’t found one. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”  
Patterson knew that the AUSA had bugged her home during their investigation about Mayfair but she didn’t know that they have torn the place apart. And she didn’t think it would have this impact on her.  
“Doesn’t feel safe anymore,” she continued quietly, “I don’t know if that makes any sense...”  
“It does,” Patterson said reassuringly, “but you can’t stay here all night. Let’s go, you’re coming to my place.”  
Tasha’s face seemed to light up at the suggestion, “really?”  
“Of course, you’re my friend. And friends help each other! C’mon.”  
With that, she got up and took Tasha with her. She had to keep a steady arm around the Latina since she seemed to have difficulties standing up on her own.  
God, I’m glad she called me, Patterson thought. She couldn’t imagine Tasha having to get home by herself.  
The brunette was smiling again and it warmed Patterson’s heart. 

They went outside and she called a cab. She was thankful for Tasha’s small frame otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to support her weight as they were waiting on the street.  
They entered the taxi and she gave the driver her address. 

They were sitting comfortably on the back when Tasha started giggling.  
Patterson turned toward her and looked at her oddly.  
“What’s so funny?” She asked her, no understanding what was causing her to laugh.  
“You’re glowing,” was Tasha’s answer.  
Patterson frowned, even more confused: “What?”  
And Tasha, still giggling, pointed a finger at her face: “You’re glowing!” She repeated, “Your hair and your skin, in the lights of the streets, it makes a halo around you…just like an angel!”  
Patterson felt her cheeks get warmer. She didn’t how to respond to that.  
It was true that in the darkness of the taxi, her blonde hair and pale skin were standing out.  
Tasha focused then on her eyes, making her a little bit uncomfortable.  
“Your eyes too,” she said. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have amazing eyes?”  
Now Patterson could feel her cheeks turning a violent red. But Tasha didn’t seem to notice and carried on: “Because they are. They’re s blue. They’re beautiful.”  
Then she shrugged and turned away.  
“You’re beautiful anyway.”  
Patterson didn’t know what to say but, despite her embarrassment, she was beaming (why? She didn’t know as well). Tasha thought she was beautiful and that was enough to warm her heart. A small smile formed on her face.  
She turned to look at the other woman, but she was intently staring out of the windows, like this conversation had never happened, lost in her thoughts.  
The rest of the ride was spent in silence.

\---

When they finally arrived at her apartment, Tasha was not in her previous cheerful mood, but instead, she seemed to mope.  
After Patterson put away her coat and bag, she headed for the kitchen, thinking that water would be good for Tasha. 

“It’s all my fault.”  
Patterson stopped dead in her tracks. That sentence was said by none other than a very alert Tasha, sitting on her carpet, between the coffee table and the couch. She wasn’t looking at her.  
“What do you mean?” Patterson asked her, slowly sitting down next to her, the glass of water still in her hand.  
Tasha sighed deeply, still not looking at her: “Everything that happened…Jane, Mayfair, the team…it’s all my fault”  
Patterson put the glass on the table and turned toward the Latina.  
“Of course not! How can you say that? We didn’t know, you didn’t know what would happen! Even Jane, she was caught up in all of this…Well, true, she could have told us what was going on instead of keeping secrets. But still, you’re not responsible for what happened!”  
Tasha finally turned herself to face her. In her eyes, Patterson could see everything that she wanted t say but couldn’t: grief, despair, reproach, and above all, pain. She wasn’t crying, (Patterson never saw her cry in all the time she worked with her) but she looked miserable and fragile, at this instant, in her living room. She looked like she was ready to fall apart and break into a million pieces.  
“No, you don’t understand. I…I suspected Mayfair, I suspected her to be hiding important things from us and that Weitz guy found about it, and he kind of blackmailed me to…”  
Tasha stopped immediately. Patterson didn’t know about her debts, about her gambling addiction, nobody knew. And she almost told her.  
She closed her eyes, wishing that Patterson hadn’t heard her.  
Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on her side. She frowned.  
“Blackmailed you? About what? You know he has no right to do that, Tash, you could have come to us! We’re family!”

Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the fact that Patterson called her ‘Tash’ and said she was family, or maybe it was simply the fact that she wanted so badly to talk to someone; anyway, she started to let everything out.  
She couldn’t keep it to herself anymore. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and started talking.  
“I have gambling problems, for years now, well, since my partner was shot, it was my way of dealing with it…anyway, I have debts now, a lot of debts. And Weitz found about it. He was going to tell everything if I didn’t help him. And the worse part is that I wanted to found out what Mayfair was doing, I helped him voluntarily, Patterson! I helped him bring down one of our own! And now she’s dead. If I had trusted her, if I had trusted you, the team, she wouldn’t be dead and we wouldn’t be torn apart that way. I’m to blame for this; it’s my fault. And now, I can’t even live with myself.”

Overwhelmed by what she just said, Tasha puts her head into her hands, as if she could get away from all of this.  
Patterson looked at her, wide-eyed, but she wasn’t horrified or angry like Tasha thought she would. She was just surprised. And hurt. She knew Tasha had secrets and demons but she didn’t know she was completely consumed by it. And she also thought that one day she would come and talk to her; one day where she would be sober, not drunk. Well apparently, that day was today.  
But she wasn’t going to give up on her. She is her family. Her friend. And maybe more. She is going to fight for her. This wasn’t her fault and she is going to make her see that. 

“Tasha, look at me.” The brunette slowly raised her head. “It’s not your fault, okay? It’s not. We’re all responsible, we all worked separately, we didn’t act like a team. And now Mayfair’s dead. We can’t change that. You didn’t pull the trigger. You didn’t force her to do what she did. She knew what she was doing. Even if it meant putting her life in danger. She’s responsible for her own decisions. And we can’t change that. You did what you had to do; you did your job. What we can be blamed for is not trusting each other. We weren’t a team. And that’s why we fell apart.”  
She paused and looked at Tasha intently.  
“Tasha, you need to understand, if you want to move on, if we all want to move on, that it’s not our fault. It’s not your fault.”

As she said that, she took her hands in her own and squeezed them gently, trying to soothe her. Patterson realized then that she was crying. Without thinking, she hugged her, tight. 

After a moment, the girls broke away from each other.  
“Feeling better?” Patterson asked. Tasha nodded silently.  
“Okay, we’re going to be alright. But we need to rely on each other, so no more secrets, okay?” Tasha nodded once more, she felt so much better now that someone knew and especially someone who wasn’t judging her but ready to help her. She didn’t know how to express the gratitude she felt toward Patterson. But she could promise her to trust her and not hide things from her again. She could do that.  
“And about your problems, we’ll get through it, together.”  
Tasha met Patterson’s eyes and said: “I trust you.”  
Still holding her hand, she added: “It’s not my fault.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I love y'all!


End file.
